In a preregistered research, we examined the relationships between conspiracy mentality (i.e., the individual susceptibility to endorse conspiracy theories, Bruder et al., 2013) and trust in three actors of the COVID-19 crisis: 1) Political institutions, 2) scientific and medical institutions, and 3) the medical personnel. While the two former groups have played a direct or indirect role in decisions related to public health measures, the latter has not. We expected all these relationships to be negative and mediated by the belief that the pandemic is instrumentalized by authorities to pursue secret agendas. In a study conducted with Belgian (N = 1136) and French (N = 374) convenience samples, conspiracy mentality negatively predicted trust in political institutions, and trust in scientific and medical institutions. These relations were partly mediated by belief that the pandemic is instrumentalized by authorities. In addition, distrust in political, medical and scientific institutions were highly and positively correlated, suggesting that these groups may be viewed as part of a same supra-ordinate category - the "Elites". By contrast, we found a small negative relationship between conspiracy mentality and trust in the medical personnel in the Belgian sample, but not in the French sample. Trust in the medical personnel was unrelated to the belief that the pandemic is instrumentalized, and only weakly related to distrust in political institutions. This suggests that individuals with a susceptibility to believe in conspiracy theories may not have a propensity to distrust all actors involved in the management of the pandemic, but only those directly or indirectly tied to decisions pertaining to public health measures.

中文翻译：

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在大流行期间寻找与秘密议程的联系：阴谋心态与对政治、医疗和科学机构的信任度降低有关，但对医务人员则不然。


在一项预先注册的研究中，我们研究了阴谋心态（即个人对阴谋论的敏感性，Bruder 等，2013）与对 COVID-19 危机的三个参与者的信任之间的关系：1）政治机构，2）科学和医疗机构，以及 3) 医务人员。虽然前两个群体在与公共卫生措施相关的决策中发挥了直接或间接的作用，但后者却没有。我们预计所有这些关系都是消极的，并且是通过这样的信念来调解的：当局利用这场流行病来追求秘密议程。在对比利时（N = 1136）和法国（N = 374）便利样本进行的一项研究中，阴谋心态对政治机构的信任以及对科学和医疗机构的信任产生负面影响。这些关系在一定程度上是因为人们相信当局利用了这一流行病。此外，对政治、医疗和科学机构的不信任呈高度正相关，这表明这些群体可能被视为同一个上位类别——“精英”的一部分。相比之下，我们在比利时样本中发现阴谋心态与对医务人员的信任之间存在较小的负相关关系，但在法国样本中则没有。对医务人员的信任与流行病被工具化的信念无关，与对政治机构的不信任关系不大。这表明，容易相信阴谋论的个人可能不会倾向于不信任参与大流行管理的所有参与者，而只会不信任那些与公共卫生措施相关决策直接或间接相关的参与者。